NASA cuts: a danger for everyone

I was still awake at 2 in the morning when the first reports of the Russian meteor began filtering in via Twitter, and by morning, full videos of the thing passing through the atmosphere, shattering windows and creating general panic as it went, were all over the Web.

One, which shows a blip streaking across the sky before flashing brighter than a half-dozen suns, is particularly captivating and looks like a scene out of a movie – just not the movie that I ever, ever wanted to see in real life. Had that happened in New Jersey I would have been hiding behind the couch, chain-smoking cigarettes and ranting about how the world was ending.

Thankfully, it was in Russia, and because the 10,000-ton meteor wasn't all that large (in cosmic terms), the video remains a fascinating bit of science instead of an impromptu documentary on how the world ended.

But even knowing how bad it could have been, the event has had one huge benefit: in one fell swoop, that chunk of rock reinforced the faltering notion that space science is, well, kind of important, and it illustrated that in a way that hundreds of broke, frustrated columnists like me couldn't do in a century.

Make no mistake: nothing was stopping that meteor from being three miles wide, and it is a total roll of the dice as to how close these things come to Earth. If it had been that big we likely would have detected it, of course, but that doesn't mean that we could do anything to stop it aside from launching some "Hail Mary" nukes and praying — a pretty poor game plan for saving humanity and ensuring the survival of the human race.

Sound like a movie script? Of course it does. But it’s wholly possible, and it has happened, over and over and over again. One need only look up at the massive craters on our own moon to realize that the biography of the Earth is rife with apocalyptic, world-ending impacts.

But we, in what seems like a permanent mission to swallow the barrel of our own shotgun, refuse to adequately fund our one line of defense against all this (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and in this "GOVERNMENT IS SOOO EVIL!" era, you can pretty much type "NASA budget cuts" into Google on any given day and find something new that’s on the chopping block.

Every year the pool of money devoted to scientific exploration shrinks — down to $17.7 billion from $18.4 billion two years ago — and programs are cut and ideas abandoned because politicians (including President Obama) refuse to devote money to it. That is not how it should be.

I will never understand the zeal with which we’ve abandoned our space program, and the lack of progress we’ve made since the leaps and bounds of the mid-20th century is especially frustrating. But hopefully, the Russian meteor will renew both interest in and concern about our space program and let us move forward again on the grand plans we’ve walked away from.

After all, as the famous Bill Nye succinctly said in a CNN interview last summer: "If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it’s game over. It’s control-alt-delete for civilization."

Being as we are the only species to walk the Earth that has both the technology and the ability to avoid this fate, I suggest we take this responsibility more seriously.

Get out of my Facebook

BY STEVE JANOSKI

It was in the English dystopia depicted in the 2005 movie "V for Vendetta" that I first saw the ideals enumerated in Orwell's "1984" come to life, as agents of a repressive government rode around in vans monitoring private citizens' phone conversations while "fingermen" patrolled the streets at night looking for those who violated curfew.

Being what one might call a vicious civil libertarian who sees the threat of the iron heel's descent behind every governmental policy, I was always terrified at the prospect that such a thing might occur, and that movie's depiction of how, and why, it could happen, were ringing all too true at the time.

But, just a few short years after the film was made, Americans, in their infinite wisdom, have already made roving vans and telescreens not only unnecessary, but magnificently obsolete by incorporating Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and a plethora of other oddly-named Internet sites into their daily lives.

Now, the government doesn't have to spy on its citizens, because people are so willing to voice every feeling about every mundane event that even the most stringent monitor at the Ministry of Love would say, "Jesus, shut up already, I just don't care."

I too am guilty of having a Facebook, although I am extraordinarily difficult to track down and use it for little more than posting Iron Maiden videos or Bill Murray quotes. But still, I'm on it, and I must admit that it's entertaining and has its uses.

However, what frightens me is that our willingness to share our thoughts has come at a price, and that's been illuminated by a recent Associated Press article on what is becoming an increasingly common practice of employers: demanding prospective employees' Facebook logins during interviews in order to further "vet" candidates.

According to the article, the practice occurs more frequently when applying for jobs in fields like law enforcement, but it's expanding to the private sector as well.

Sears, for example, uses a "third-party application to draw information from the profile, such as friends lists," as a way to stay "updated on the applicant's work history."

While this might be enough to convince some applicants (like me) to walk out and tell Sears what they can do with their friend request and third-party applications, in an economy that remains somewhat rocky, not everyone is in a position to turn down jobs that provide a near-living wage.

Inevitably, some will say that this is what we get for being a part of the digital age. Facebook is an Internet site, one which is neither secure or private, and what's done there is akin to leaving your bedroom blinds open all the time...along with the windows open. After sending binoculars to all of your neighbors.

But regardless, that does not give government agencies or private companies the right to get around the privacy settings that we are able to set up.

These are frightening legal questions that are straying into new territory, and it's likely that it will take lawsuits, decisions, appeals, and more decisions before a clear line is drawn on what exactly is public and what is not in regards to social networking sites.

The American public must have some say in this. Now is the time that the citizenry, which is so prone to overreact on the mundane and so willfully ignorant about the important, must overreact in the sharpest way to this kind of invasion of privacy in order to stop it where it stands.

We have seen what can happen when all care or want of privacy ceases to be a concern - a quick look at the citizens of Great Britain, a kingdom already under Big Brother's watchful eye, provides the starkest illustration.

And as a nation that values personal freedom and self-reliance (even if we rarely practice the latter), we do not want to head in that direction.

Once, being "off the grid" meant that that you lived in a cabin, drank rain water from barrels, and burned candles instead of light bulbs. Now, it's claiming that you don't have a Facebook and admitting that you have no idea how to clearly read a Twitter feed.

Consider me "off the grid."

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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